Due to impending reassignment to Germany, I can only take one car and the family SUV wins out on this one. I don't feel the car deserves to sit in storage for three, possibly four years and would prefer to sell to someone who can appreciate this car. I have also experienced a significant emotional event in my family which requires me to sell the car. Below is the write up the original owner did on the car when I bought it and nothing has changed in the last 4 months.
"It was bought new in March of 1999 after being on order for 4 months. This was the first 99 Cobra to come in to Raleigh, NC. This is a one owner pampered car, garage kept since March of 1999. It has seen the race track twice in its life, and neither times were while supercharged. In naturally aspirated form with only 4.30 gears, I ran 13.3@107 on 18” street tires with no race prep. After that night at the track, I decided to avoid premature breakage that I was going to build this as an extremely high performance street car, exhibiting the best of both worlds—great looks, and a very powerful engine capable of ~700hp.
While starting the build of the car in naturally aspirated form, I became friends with Jeff Bronstein at SpeedWorx! Hyperformance. He supplied me with all of the OEM Saleen parts to convert my car from a basic 1999 Cobra to an exact Saleen replica. While doing my research on exactly what was needed to convert my car to a Saleen, I compiled the data and wrote an article that is still featured on SpeedWorx! at
http://speedworx.com/cgi-bin/shop.p...een_convert.htm . All Saleen OEM parts were used, with the exception of the firewall badge, shifter console badge, and any bumper numbers or Saleen rear decklid badges. When doing this conversion, the Ford “black” (and I use that in quotes because we all know that Ford’s black is grey in comparison to many other high performance cars) was replaced and the entire car was repainted professionally by Schaeffer BMW in Wilmington, NC. 2 full weeks of prep work was performed on the Saleen body parts, and they ended up smoother and in better shape than you could get from Saleen (also documented on SpeedWorx! forums). The paint job on this car is outstanding and makes OEM Ford black Mustangs pale in comparison when parked side by side. All subsequent paint work, including the Ford 2000 Cobra R hood was also performed by Schaeffer BMW because of their superb work.
After the body was done, I got bit by the performance bug. After speaking with Jeff Bronstein again, I was easily convinced into buying a Vortech E-Trim supercharger kit. After installing a Vortech Supercharger kit and making 415rwhp with only exhaust, I ended up cracking ¼” off of a piston in hot summer weather here at the beach in Wilmington, NC. When this happened, I got on the horn with John Tymensky at Modular Performance and had them start the rebuild of my engine. The specs are listed below, but let’s just say things snowballed into “just fix the engine and give me forged pistons” into an engine with virtually everything done to it that could be done. The Ford Racing FR500 valvetrain kit was ordered and installed, which includes 4 new camshafts, roller followers, valvesprings, and valves. These cams have a redline of 7500rpm. The weakest link in the Modular Performance 284 cubic inch 32 valve motor is the Manley H-Beam rods which have a 750hp point of failure. With the new engine came Jet-Hot Hooker long tube headers, Jet-Hot off-road x-pipe, and Dynomax 3” tailpipes fitted with Flowmaster’s new Super 40 series mufflers. The sound is nothing short of incredible, and extremely unique!
The motor swap was performed by myself and my good friend Bud Anderson. While we had the motor out things snowballed and our wheels were turning. We thought some of the stock Vortech parts were garbage, and they needed to be replaced. One of which was their aftercooler water pump, which died almost immediately after installation. This piece was replaced with a 2004 Cobra intercooler water pump which has worked flawlessly. The other part was Vortech’s ABS plastic water/ice resevoir. We knew a very good welder in our area, so we had him take the measurements and fabricate an identical replacement to the Vortech piece out of aluminum. We had AN fittings welded in, and another close friend of mine who polishes motorcycles for a living got his hands on this and made it shine. He also performed all of the polishing on the engine and accessories. To top off the replacement pieces, all stainless braided lines were used for the aftercooler accessories. This really makes them stand out in the engine bay!
Aside from those pieces, the valve covers were powdercoated in a “Super Chrome” finish which resembles polished aluminum. The bad side is they’re not as reflective as polished aluminum, but the good side is that you can spray quick detailer on them and wipe them clean with a terry towel! The powdercoated finish will not scratch, and will not be harmed by fluids like antifreeze or oil. The Anderson Ford power pipe was also powdercoated in the same color. To complete the engine dress-up, the upper intake manifold, throttle body, intake elbow, aftercooler, and supercharger were hand polished to a mirror shine. An MGW Cobra oil cap adds a final touch of class.
The new engine at this point has only roughly 5000 miles on it and is just now getting to the point of being broken in. I constantly check the fluids in the car and perform regular inspections of the spark plugs. Just recently, the only mechanic in North Carolina that I would ever trust to work on my car, Ray Lee at Haywood Custom Speed, performed a complete check up on my car. He checked all suspension pieces for tightness, replaced the blower pulley, inspected all lines, and performed a compression test. This is the 2nd compression test I’ve had done on the car, and both times it has passed with flying colors. The engine is in perfect working condition, and as I said before, the car has never seen a race track in supercharged form. In theory, it’s a virgin street car.
After trying a few tuners to get the drivability issues ironed out, I hooked up with Ed Clark from SCT. The car was dyno tuned by Ed initially with a Pro-M 92MM mass air meter, which was incorrectly calibrated and in general just performed badly. The car sat in the garage for a while until SCT’s mass air meter was released, and was re-tuned on Friday 2-25-05 and made 512rwhp and 436rwtq. This translates to 602hp and 513ft-lbs of torque at the engine.
Don’t let the numbers this car puts out fool you. The fuel system was built to handle 700hp+, along with the engine. The bottleneck in it’s current configuration is the E-Trim supercharger. With an easy blower replacement to an S-Trim or a T-Trim, this car will make over 600hp to the rear wheels. With the bigger supercharger you will be able to increase your revs to about 7250/7300rpm and run around 14-16psi of boost. Again, let me stress that I set this up as a street car, and replacing the blower wasn’t important to me because a 600hp car was plenty fast to drive to and from work and on the weekends."
The original owner had in excess of $65,000 invested in this car. I all specs/clearances/weights from the motor build and I can provide you with additional resources if you would like follow up information on the car. I have many pictures, and would be happy to take any additional pictures that you would like to see upon your request, so don’t hesitate to ask. The car has 47,656 miles on the body, and just a little over 5,000 miles on the engine. The parts that were replaced in recent months and are virtually brand new are: Baer Eradispeed Rotors, Porterfield pads, and a brand new set of 2004 Cobra seats.
email:
wjlanehdtv@netzero.net
Price: $23,000
Mods
512rwhp / 436rwtq
602hp / 513ft-lbs
284ci. 4.6L 32V Cobra Engine
199 Cobra (Saleen) 602 hp/513 ft-lbs (VIDEO)
